Locations/Centers

The Prevention Research Center (PRC) of PIRE was founded in 1983, and is
located in Oakland, California. PRC is one of sixteen centers sponsored by the
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), of the National
Institutes of Health, and is the only one that specializes in prevention. PRC's
focus is on conducting research to better understand the social and physical
environments that influence individual behavior that lead to alcohol and drug
misuse. The Center operates with the following objectives:

Undertake innovative prevention research and
approaches that contribute to informed decisions about cost-effective prevention
programs and policies at the local, state and national levels.

Summarize new and existing knowledge about
prevention theories, policies, and programs, and disseminate this information to
professional, academic, and community audiences.

To provide multidisciplinary training and research
opportunities

The current Center grant emphasizes the development of integrated approaches
to both basic research and applied prevention science, building upon our
commitments to: (1) longer term, longitudinal research; (2) developmental
research in new areas with prevention research promise; and (3) natural
extensions of existing research that will replicate and confirm prior findings.
The proposed research extends these commitments, examining the multiple
interacting contexts of alcohol use and problems (e.g., work, home and family),
the multi-level interactions of environmental characteristics and individual
determinants of drinking (e.g., alcohol outlets and youth drinking), and the
complex interacting policy environments of state level policy change. Alcohol
Outlets and Underage Sales proposes a series of geostatistical studies of the
spatial and temporal relationships between alcohol outlets and problems
involving underage drinkers. Alcohol Availability and Underage Drinking develops
data from the same multilevel survey to consider the role of availability as it
contributes to drinking and problem behaviors among young people. State Level
Availability and Alcohol Problems takes an integrated approach to evaluating the
impact of different state level alcohol policy interventions (e.g., beverage
prices and availability) in an effort to understand, and ultimately predict, the
determinants of differences between states. Dissemination and Adoption of
Science-Based Prevention, as a new component, reflects the growing maturity of
environmental prevention. This component will disseminate science-based
prevention programs and explore the impact of dissemination.

Other studies within the Center include adolescent sexuality, which focuses
on the role that exposure to sexual content in the media may play in the
development of adolescents' sexual attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors;
family-based adolescent drug/alcohol prevention studies that explore family
relationships, and parental influences; and young adult prevention studies that
address drug/alcohol use/problems as they relate to adult transitions.

Areas of Expertise

Policies and programmatic strategies to control
access to alcohol

Mass media influences on drinking and related
problems

Workplace alcohol problems and programs

Relationship of health care finance to alcohol
and drug treatment

Cultural practices and norms related to alcohol
and drug consumption

Application of mathematical models to analyze
patterns of alcohol consumption and strategies to alter consumption and related
problems